Primary Menu

The ?Danish Study? on Wind Power and Koch Industries

The "Danish study," prepared by Danish think-tank CEPOS, provides clean energy opponents a means of raising questions about the viability of renewable energy and a means of directly criticizing President Obama for his statement that Denmark produces almost 20% of its electricity through wind power.

However, the study contains factual errors, its conclusions have been misrepresented and to boot, its findings are not particularly relevant to the US. The study includes errors such as a miscalculation of the electricity production from wind energy in Denmark (they claim 5% of total production in Denmark though the real percentage is 20%). In addition, the study does not take into account the differences between the European and North American electric grids.

Nevertheless, like the study from Spain, the CEPOS study is being promoted and disseminated through many of the same organizations in Koch’s web. The “Danish Study” appears to follow a similar pattern.

* CEPOS was recently awarded a $100,000 grant from the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, which has given CEPOS “several awards.” The Charles G. Koch Foundation and the Claude R. Lambe Foundation both support the Atlas Economic Research Foundation.

* The Institute for Energy Research is promoting the study among its members and Hill staff, as well as online. IER organized a three-day tour in September 2009 to bring the report’s co-author Hugh Sharman and CEPOS chief executive Martin Agerup to Washington D.C. to explain the study to a “wider American audience.”

The organization also created fact sheets that promote the study’s findings and claim President Obama is misusing the Danish example. Heritage Foundation promoted the study on their website.

Koch Industries: Secretly Funding the Climate Denial Machine

Most Americans have never heard of Koch Industries, one of the largest private corporations in the country, because it has no Koch-branded consumer products, sells no shares on the stock market and has few of the disclosure requirements of a public company. Although Koch intentionally stays out of the public eye, it is now playing a quiet but dominant role in a high-profile national policy debate on global warming.

Koch Industries has become a financial kingpin of climate science denial and clean energy opposition. This private, out-of-sight corporation is now a partner to ExxonMobil, the American Petroleum Institute and other donors that support organizations and front-groups opposing progressive clean energy and climate policy. In fact, Koch has out-spent ExxonMobil in funding these groups in recent years. From 2005 to 2008, ExxonMobil spent $8.9 million while the Koch Industries-controlled foundations contributed $24.9 million in funding to organizations of the ‘climate denial machine’.

This report focuses on activities by Koch Industries and its affiliates, as well as the family—and company—controlled foundations which fund organizations that spread inaccurate and misleading information about climate science and clean energy policies. Included is research on the company and the Koch brothers, two of the top ten richest people in the United States.